John Oliver Shares The ‘Funniest’ Way Emmys Could Have Responded To Colbert Cancellation

John Oliver on Monday pitched how the Emmys could have handled the much-anticipated presentation of the award for Outstanding Talk Series, which fellow late-night comedian Stephen Colbert won months after CBS canceled his show.

“I will say this — I know we wanted him to win. The right thing to happen was for him to win. The funniest thing to happen would have been if you had won,” quipped Oliver in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, who advocated for Colbert to win in the lead-up to the award show.

“You’re right,” Kimmel replied.

“Most of me wanted him to win, a part of me — the part of me that I like more — just wanted to see your face go, ‘Oh no! Not like this,’” Oliver joked.

Kimmel revealed that a driver for one of his writers used ChatGPT to search who took home the Emmy and, when the AI platform inaccurately informed him that his show won, questioned if the platform knew something he didn’t.

“I was like, ‘Oh shit! If we win, this is a disaster!’” Kimmel said.

“It would have been so fucked, he had his whole staff with him,” Oliver noted. “You’d have been booed onto the stage.”

“Maybe stoned,” Kimmel suggested.

Oliver, who took home two Emmys for “Last Week Tonight,” said he was backstage and cut off an interview to go watch Colbert’s speech.

In his speech, Colbert declared that he’s never loved his country “more desperately” and stressed that Americans should “stay strong” and “be brave.”

The remarks from Colbert — a fierce critic of President Donald Trump — followed speculation that his show was canceled for political reasons despite CBS insisting that it was “purely a financial decision.”

Ahead of CBS’s announcement, the comedian joked about the network’s parent company, Paramount Global, settling a lawsuit with Trump just ahead of its planned merger with Skydance Media which required approval from the administration to proceed.